Introduction

“What is truth?” (Jn 18:38) These words of Pilate have rung across the ages. Though he found no guilt in Christ (a truth claim), he nevertheless would hand Christ over to death. The Jewish authorities for their part condemned Christ because from their perspective he had blasphemed and so merited death. From the Christian perspective, while asserting Christ’s innocence, we will quote Christ himself who said “no one takes it [his life] from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again.” (Jn 10:18) And so, what is the truth of Christ’s condemnation?

The ambiguities of “truth” as seen in the passion arise often when truth itself is considered. Today we discuss and debate constantly what is “true.” We all (for the most part) agree that there is such a thing as truth; however, rarely do we ever stop to consider what do we mean by that term or by what means we arrive at truth. The past few centuries have provided different answers to both of these questions and often the common person unreflectively mixes them together creating a cacophony of principles for understanding what is true.

This cacophonous path to truth in turn makes it difficult (nigh impossible) to have a true dialogue with another, since if truth is unique to each person and/or there is no common way to arrive at truth, then how can we have any certainty that what we say to another is understood by the other? If there is no common measure to gauge our advancement towards truth, then how can we have any hope that we are advancing in our dialogue with one another (let alone that such an endeavor is even possible)? Given the great importance of “truth,” it is worth reflecting upon it so as to seek greater clarity in what we mean by the concept.

Definition of Truth

Aquinas defines truth as “the conformity of intellect and thing.”¹ The intellect is the power or ability of the soul to apprehend or recognize truth. Aquinas continues stating that “the true is in the intellect in so far as it is conformed to the object understood.”² And so when the intellect “knows” truth, it is knowing the thing or object³ that it is seeking to understand by way of conforming itself to the object itself. Therefore, we have truth in the intellect only insofar as the notion of the object in our intellect corresponds with the object of our attention.

Continuing, we can say that truth properly speaking exists in the intellect not in the thing itself.⁴ Truth is the impression of the thing upon the intellect, and so the impression “exists” in the intellect. The thing itself is just existing. What we call truth is the impression of that thing in the intellect and we say this impression is true insofar as it corresponds with the thing itself. This then defines a relationship with the thing by which we can say that the thing is true in a secondary sense.⁵

This relationship then serves as a measure of the intellect, since though truth resides in the intellect, it is the existence or being of the object which judges or measures the intellectual impression. And so, truth is essentially relational. Truth depends upon the relationship between the conformity of the knower to that which is known.

Perspectives on Being

This relational aspect of truth brings us to the role of the perspective of the knower. Our perspective affects what we see. Imagine a soda can upon a table. If you look at it straight on, you will perceive the outline of a rectangle with some idea that it is a 3-d object with a curved surface. From this perspective it is true to say that the can has the outline of a rectangle. Now if you change your perspective to be directly above the can looking down, that outline changes to a circle. From this perspective it is true that the outline of the can is a circle. Both perceptions are true, but according to different perspectives. Our perspective (literal and metaphorical) of an object does not change truth but instead changes the kinds of truths that we can apprehend. Changes in perspective reveal more about a thing and so enable the intellect to know more perfectly or fully the object in itself.

Now it must be said that at times a change in perspective does lead us to invalidate previous understandings of an object. This can stem from several sources. First and most simply, we may have had a false impression to begin with. We had not properly conformed our minds to the truth and at a later time have become aware of this fact. Next, we may have had a true impression of the object but then joined (implicitly or explicitly) other false conceptions to that impression. This can often come either from past experiences or imagined connections. The error here is in the added concept, not the initial true impression. Third, our impression of the object was incomplete and resulted in an admixture of truth and falsity.

Returning to the soda can, our perspective upon it really does change how we see the can and so changes the truth about it which we ascertain. Modern psychology and neurology have found that what we attend to (that is focus upon) actually changes what we see in the world. There are more stimuli at any given moment than we can possibly focus upon, and so our act of attending to the world determines how our brain processes sense stimuli (and what it ignores). This act of attending causes us to be unaware or unperceptive of things unrelated to what we are focusing on. If you were to focus upon the soda can attentively and nothing else, someone could walk into the room and so long as they did not disrupt you, you would probably have no idea of their presence. You would be unable to know of them because your attention (that is perspective) restricted what you were able to know.

This connects neatly with a medieval epistemological axiom: quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur. (An object is received according to the mode of the recipient receiving it.) Or to quote Aquinas, “the known must be in the knower after the manner of the knower.”⁶ Both of these mean that we know objects according to our mode/way/ability to know them. Our mode of attending to an object modifies our mode of receiving that object at a neurological level. This in turn affects the way in which we know it. And by “way” we mean both the path by which we come to know the object, and the final result of truth in our intellect which has been conditioned by that path.

But this mode of receiving the object into the intellect is not only a matter of attention. It comes into play along the whole sensory path. Our different senses apprehend objects according to their construction and so in turn hand on a sense impression according to that construction. The sound of a trumpet interacts with the ear in a different way than the light reflecting off the trumpet interacts with the eyes. The one and the same object is apprehended by the receiver (eye or ear) according to its mode of being. Further the intellect can only attend to the object according to its available powers. Meaning, a person without sight cannot attend to a trumpet by way of their eyes.

Emotions (or the passions in Thomistic language) are the internal psychosomatic response to external stimuli.⁷ As all know from experience, our emotions “color” or affect how we receive the world and so in turn cause us to know an object according to how we are feeling. Our emotions do not change the truth (unless our emotions change the object itself which we are apprehending⁸) but they do change how we receive it.

As with emotion so too with our internal senses.⁹ We will look at two in particular: memory, and imagination. Memory is the faculty to store sense impressions for recollection at a later time once the sensation has ceased. We can judge our memories as true insofar as in the present they conform to the object which was perceived in the past. This adds a temporal relationship to remembered truth. Our history both as an individual and with the object of perception as remembered conditions the mode by which we experience something and in turn our ability to apprehend a true impression of it. A false impression of some object in the past preconditions us to draw a false impression in the present. So too a memory which was true but has become false over time harms our ability to understand a thing in the moment.

Alongside memory there is imagination, which is the faculty that combines memories together into a phantasm. These phantasms can be said to be true in a restricted way. We can use our imagination to generate diverse ideas on how to do something or what some reality would be like but which we have not experienced ourselves. And so, for such phantasms there is a theoretical reality to judge it by, even though we have not experienced it yet. That phantasm is true insofar as it aligns with reality, but since we have not experienced that reality, we are not justified in calling it true yet. Once we experience the reality itself, then that unjustified true phantasm turns into justified true knowledge. For example, one could imagine a recipe to bake a cake. That recipe could truly make a good cake, but until the cake is actually baked, that judgement is not justified.

Origins of Being

What has been said thus far largely applies to the knower, which is only part of the relationship of truth. If a thing is known according to the mode of the being of the knower, and the intellect conforms itself to the thing, then understanding the nature of the being of the thing itself is quite relevant to understanding what truth is.

And so, we start with two simple observations: things have being (that is things exist), and we encounter their being. Therefore “everything, in as far as it has being, so far is it knowable.”¹⁰ Since, if something does not exist, then there is nothing to know. This is different from knowing an absence of something, since we only know that there is an absence because previously, we had encountered something that had existed and now we no longer encounter that thing. The existence of this absence is predicated or depends upon the previous existence of the thing. For example, you can only know that an object is missing from your pocket if you know the object was previously in your pocket.

To reiterate Aquinas from above, insofar as a thing is, it is knowable. The next question then is: what is a thing? Or to put it another way, whence comes that things being? After all, the origin of a thing in some way makes the thing what it is. Further, that which receives its being from another participates in some way in the other’s being.¹¹ As such, to understand the thing is to in some way know that which gives being or existence to the thing.

Now God alone does not have being, he is being itself.¹² Everything else that exists receives its being from another, ultimately flowing from God since nothing besides God is existence itself.¹³ And it is through things receiving their existence from God that we can come to know God to some degree through knowing things.¹⁴ But this simply knowing that a thing is and that it receives existence from another since it is not its own existence does not exhaust our knowledge of truth. As we encounter being, we find that things exist in multiple ways.

Now since things receive their existence from another and exist in diverse manners, this diversity flows from the design of that which gave the things of the world their existence. And so that which gives being to a thing defines in some way what the thing is. That is, the creator of the thing defines what the thing is. For example, an expo marker is an expo marker because the inventor of the expo marker designed it as such. The marker does not choose to be the marker but instead receives its existence from its creator which makes it what it is. As with the marker, so too with everything else. All that exists receives its being from another. And so, all that is receives what it is from that which created it, ultimately stemming from God.

The truth of what a thing is, then is determined by that which made it or that which is the source of its being.¹⁵ This means that foundationally truth is gift. It is not constructed, it is not acquired, it is not conquered. Before a thing existed, it could do nothing to earn its existence, it could do nothing to determine its existence. It simply received its being as a free gift. And as its being is a gift so too the truth of its being is a gift. In turn, our knowledge of a thing and apprehension of the truth of the thing is a gift revealed to us by the thing which we actively receive.

Unicity of Truth

The nature of existence which we just discussed then indicates that all truth is united. Meaning a) there is a singular source of truth, and b) truths cannot contradict one another. Starting with proposition a, we can imagine how the world would change if there were multiple sources of truth. (This is the same as saying, what if there were multiple creator deities.) If this were the case, we would expect there to be inconsistencies in observed truths since two minds cannot, even when striving to cooperate, coincide exactly. For if they did, then there would be no difference between them, meaning that which was posited as “two minds” would in reality be one mind.¹⁶ As a result, if there were two sources of truth (that is two sources of being) we would expect to find modes of existence that were impossible to rationally reconcile.

But we find that the world is in fact rational and comprehensible. And so, there is one source of truth. This consistency and so unicity of truth derives from the source of all existence being God. He is the single cause and God willed from his divine mind that which is to exist. God himself is simple and one (in nature), and so truth unites in God’s mind.¹⁷

This brings us to proposition b: could different truths contradict each other? Truth is the apprehension of being by the intellect. In order for truths to contradict, the underlying being must contradict. Meaning, a thing must both be and not be in the same way and at the same time. (E.g., a light is simultaneously entirely on and entirely off.) That would violate the law of non-contradiction. To quote Aquinas, “wherefore the first indemonstrable principle is that the same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time, which is based on the notion of being and not-being: and on this principle all others are based.”¹⁸ If this principle does not hold, then rational explanations of the world would not be possible.

But this only addresses the existence of the thing in itself. As we come to apprehend something, apparent contradictions between perceived truths do arise at times. The source of these contradictions though is not within the being of the thing, but within the fallible intellect of the knower. When two intellectual apprehensions contradict each other within our mind, that is a sign that we are currently in ignorance of the thing in some way and so need to attend anew to the thing so as to overcome our error and arrive at the truth of the matter more fully.

Stability of Truth

Should one accept that truths are related, and truth is the apprehension of being, they might further wonder if truth claims persist beyond the moment; that is, if something is true, will it be true across some time scale if not across time itself.

In order for truth to change, the being of a thing must change. The degree to which that thing changes determines the degree to which the truth of that thing changes. Now, that which is produced and then exists distinctly from its producer maintains its being unless it itself is modified. It does not change if its producer changes since its existence is independent of the producer. For example, a particular Honda Civic would not cease to be a Civic even if Honda went out of business. However, the truth of the color of that Civic would change if the owner of the car had the car repainted.

That which has existence that depends upon another though changes when that upon which it depends changes. For example, an infant in the womb depends upon its mother. When the health of the mother changes, so too does the health of the infant. Since the being of the dependent thing comes from another, should the being of the other change so too would the being of the dependent thing. Just as if you could shake the trunk of a tree, all the branches, leaves, and animals in the tree would also be shook.

This is the nature of a contingent being. Since they need not exist, their existence is dependent upon that which brought them into existence and so are liable to change. Such change then changes the truth of that thing. With the introduction of change then brings about the “creation” of time. That which is a true statement at one point in time remains true at that point from all future points of time. This is called Historical Truth. However, once there is a change, and so a step forward in time, there is also a corresponding change in truth. This is called Present Truth. Within this progression of time, and so progression of change, we also recognize that there is an underlying unity within things across time (from the Historical Truth into the Present Truth). That is, we recognize that there is an identity which persists across changes. And so, there is some mode of being (and truth) that persists through the changes that advance time forward.

This is what we will call substance, or form, or nature.¹⁹ If something changes so much that it has a new substance, or form, or nature, then what the thing is, has changed. Further, so long as forms and natures themselves remain stable across time, then truths pertaining to forms and natures from the past are still valid in the present. And here our earlier discussion on the Origins of Being flowing from God is once more relevant. Natures and forms come from the mind of God.²⁰ So long as God does not change his mind and so redefine what a particular nature is (e.g., he does not decide in 2050 A.D. to change what it means to be human), then natures and forms themselves do not change. Now, God himself is pure act and so does not change,²¹ and so his knowledge does not change.²² Further, God’s will does not change and so he will not redefine that which already is.²³ And so forms and natures flowing from the divine mind are themselves stable.

Beyond the contingent truths which we have been discussing, there are another class of truths called necessary truths. There are things which simply must exist the way that they do and are unchanging. Mathematical truths, for example, are necessary. And so, the idea one plus another one must result in two. Such truths are by their essence atemporal since they cannot change by definition. These truths when apprehended within time are then known to be true across all points of time necessarily. The ground of stability for necessary truths resides within the mind of God just as in aspects of contingent truths.

And it is here upon the stability of truth where I will finish this reflection. At a later time, I will look more deeply into the origins of being since the relationship between the divine mind and being is of essential importance to the whole epistemological framework I have just outlined. Further, the question of error needs to be addressed since it leads us to further understand the relationship between the intellect and the thing. Finally, we must reflect upon the nature of mystery and wonder in relation to Truth, since truth ultimately ascends to God who transcends the created intellect.

Footnotes

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